Don't Ask, Don't 'tel

I once asked a celebrated comic who had hit the heights of fame as the host of his own talk show what the difference was playing club dates on the road play as compared to when he started.

"Well," he said, taking a reflective moment, "the hotel-room porn has gotten a lot better."

Indeed, it had, offering an exotic array of titles and genres barely dreamt of in the pioneer days of in-room entertainment, ensuring that no traveling comic, salesperson, or junior executive be deprived of the porn that can be the only source of solace on those lonely nights away from the aggravations of home. And now Rick Santorum wants to take away even that reed of succor and support from hard-working Americans, forcing them to subsist on the racier Betty & Veronica comics for their sick kicks. The NY Daily News reports:

The Republican presidential candidate and staunch social conservative

wants to ban hard-core pornography. He calls it "toxic to marriages and
relationships" in a new statement posted on his official website.

"America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography," the former

Pennsylvania senator writes. "It contributes to misogyny and violence
against women. It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex
trafficking."

He demands a crackdown on the distribution of hardcore pornography on

the Internet, in addition to material on cable/satellite TV, hotel/motel
TV, retail shops and through the mail.
Well, that covers just about everything. When you put it together with the other pieces of Santorum's platform and public utterances, it means no sex education, no contraception, no pre-marital sex, no abortion, no pornography, no gay marriage, no Woodstock-style orgies, no nothing. The man is clearly a prune, the personification of H. L. Mencken's definition of a puritan as someone with the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be enjoying himself. Or herself. Either way, Santorum would disapprove and his disapproval wouldn't end there, because repressive types never do. There's always something else to get up their pious noses.

What's comical is how the phony libertarian outlaw types such as Robert Stacy McCain and Jeff Goldstein claim that Santorum's stand doesn't mean anything because he'll never have the power to enact his bans, he's not the only Republican candidate to call for enforcement of the obscenity laws, this is all political shadowboxing, etc. But unlike Romney and Gingrich, those shimmy-dancing opportunists, Santorum gives off the scent of someone who craves the power to legislate morality, reverse progress, and interfere in the personal lives of Americans as he sees fit, because Father Knows Best. He's very judgy that way, and the reason none of his former US Senate colleagues are hailing his candidacy is clearly because the man is such a drag.